


Dead Girl Walking

by TricksterShi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Horror, Paranormal, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 23:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1323739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TricksterShi/pseuds/TricksterShi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason those bones were buried.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rebirth

There’s a body in the woods outside of town resting in a shallow grave beneath a chestnut tree.  It’s been ten years since that body saw sky, ten long years since that body drew breath.

It’s late autumn and the chestnut leaves are falling when a dog digs up a femur and carries it back to town.  Someone calls the cops and the cops break out the K-9s.  They find that shallow grave on day two and descend on it with the crime lab.  Yellow tape stretches between the trees, stark neon among the brown and dying red.  They dig up those bones and place them in bags, each one labeled and stored just so.

It’s a girl, one says after looking at the hips.  Some poor girl, wasn’t even eighteen.

The cops grimace and shake their heads.  They pass around a thermos of coffee, white steam curling out into the chilly air.  They all say, we gotta catch the one that did this.  We gotta find whoever put this poor girl under.

They are wrong, of course, but they don’t know that yet.  What they don’t know and can’t see is that they should bury those bones deep and go back home.  Forget about the grave in the woods, leave it unmarked, let nature take it back while they sit at home sipping on apple cider and eating pie.  They would all be better off.  Safer.  Alive.

Boots and paws trample over wards and sigils carved into earth.  Shovels split the binding placed upon the grave.  They don’t know, so they dig her up.

The coroner stores the bones in the van, clear baggies lined up side by side.  He closes the doors with a snap.  Key in ignition, engine rumble, van sputters forward.

The radio cuts in and out, static choking the airwaves.  The coroner sighs and thumps the dash with his fist.  Damn thing, the county won’t spring for a new van, not in the budget this year.  The radio squeals, goes quiet, and then clears up.  It’s playing Britney Spears.

“Really?  Why?” the coroner asks the universe at large, because if he tries to change the channel it will just start the static process all over again.

Movement catches the corner of his eye.  The coroner glances in the rearview mirror as the naked bones rise and assemble into a skeleton.  The dusty jaw bone pops and settles into place.

“That’s better,” says the skeleton.

The coroner shrieks and jerks the steering wheel.  The van crashes through the guardrail.  Twisting, shrieking metal tumbles down the hill.  The van skids to a stop in the shallow creek, wheels to the sky, windshield busted out.

The coroner opens dazed eyes after a moment.  Everything blurs in and out of focus.  Something runs down his face.  He tries to lift a hand, finds out that he can’t.  It’s pinned between his body and the roof at a bad angle, obviously broken in several places.

The skeleton drifts into view.  It reaches out a single bony finger and traces through a stream of blood dripping across the coroner's face.  Then his blood travels up the finger bone and against gravity, carried by suction or magic or whatever is at work.  The coroner opens his mouth to scream, but the air leaves his lungs.  Strips of skin follow, peeling from his body to the skeleton, wrapping around the bones like wet leaves.  They ripple, expand.  The coroner gasps.  The pull on his blood grows thick, like what he imagines vampire victims must feel, if vampires were real.

Maybe they are real, he thinks in sluggish horror.

The last thing the coroner sees is his blood and skin knitting together with strands of reddish black light and settling along the bones until it is no longer a skeleton but a young woman with short brown hair and empty eye sockets.  Then the coroner’s eyes detach with a sick  _pop_.  His vision shorts out, just like that damn radio.  The coroner gives up after that, and dies between short gasps as his lungs fold up and squeeze between his naked ribs.

The young woman leans back as the rest of the organs fit into place and skin closes over them, delicate as a rose blooming in reverse.  The skeleton of the coroner collapses in his clothing.  Sad, really, but the young woman doesn’t dwell on that.

She climbs out of the van and snags a blue bio-suit to cover her body.  She stands in the creek a moment, eyes wide open to take in color and sight, toes wiggling in the cold water, and she breathes in deep and sound.

Hell yes, she thinks, and starts the walk into town.


	2. Chapter 2

The thing about curses is that they are all about perception.  After all, one person’s curse is another’s blessing, and it’s not a given that the cursed must suffer under their predicament.  The dead girl surely isn’t, but someone must.  It’s an even trade, keeps the universe in balance, yadda yadda and all that jazz.

“You’re doing your part in the cycle,” the dead girl tells the woman whose flesh she is stealing for her own. 

The woman gurgles, a last ditch effort to scream for help that will not arrive in time to do any good.  The dead girl strips the woman dry and sighs in relief as new skin replaces old- yes, God, yes, this woman actually moisturized- and enjoys the rebirth.

Perhaps she is not a cursed girl at all, but a phoenix.  She toys with the idea.  The imagery is awesome, but she has no powers of fire, only of the rending and pulling and restitching of skin and sinew.

The dead girl sweeps the bones into a bag of trash and tosses them into a dumpster.  That’s the practical part of her curse, no part of anyone goes to waste.  The skin will cover the dead girl, keep her upright, alive, and decent.  The bones will end up somewhere moist and dark and full of parasites that will break them down to eat and shit out nutrients for the soil wherever the universe puts them.

Circle of life, just like Disney sang about once upon a time in Africa long ago.

Above her, a flock of crows line the rooftops.  They caw at her.  They flap their wings and click their beaks.

She whistles back at them, sharp and high and very, very much alive.

The crows scatter into the sky, rushing feathers and angry voices.

The dead girl walks on, a delighted skip in her step.

Two blocks behind her, someone picks up her trail.

 

#

 

“Another refill, sweetie?”

The old waitress is the matronly sort, flabby in the middle with frumpy hair and pinched expression of overall done-ness with the human race.  Liver spots dot her papery skin.  She smells like tobacco, grease, and stage one lymphoma.  Her name tag reads  _Marlene_.  It suits her.

The dead girl scoots her chipped mug over.

“Yes, please.”

The waitress refills and moves on.  The dead girl dumps in sugar and cream until the coffee is a muddy river color and sweet enough to crack her teeth.  She thinks about names as she finishes the pancakes and salty eggs on her plate.  She has had many names over the years, mostly stolen along with the skin they were attached to, some from books or TV or magazines left in ditches.  Names have power in their own way.  They direct fates as sure as mythical blind women sharing one eye and cutting the threads of mortal life.

Her new name needs to be something poignant, something old, but still beautiful.  Like an icicle dragged along exposed skin.  Something with a bite, she thinks.

The dead girl mops the last of the scrambled goodness through the ocean of syrup.  Salt and maple flavored eggs.  They should can this shit to sell.

The dead girl pulls a couple bills from her new wallet and tucks them under the plate.  It’s a twenty dollar tip, that ought to make Marlene smile a bit, restore a little faith in humanity until she signs up for chemo.  The dead girl laughs at the irony and waves at the waitress on her way out.

 

#

 

Two days later the dead girl is walking down a quiet side street.  New day, new city, new breath of air.  It’s bright out, the sun just warm enough to thaw the frost off the garbage cans as spring arrives.  The air is a bite of cold and smells of cat shit and old fruit.

She is still thinking over names, because she’s not going to choose one lightly.  She now has a purse.  It hangs off her shoulder, stuffed with pages ripped from newspapers, magazines, and books she has come across on buses and in flea markets.  She has highlighted potential names with a stolen marker.

 _Sophia_ , meaning wisdom.  It sounds nice, but the dead girl does not consider herself wise.  Smart and knowing, yes, but wisdom speaks to ancient knowledge and dusty bones holding court in a graveyard of elders.

 _Lily_ , a flower, both beautiful and pure, but the dead girl has a belly full of sharp edges and broken teeth lining her soul.

 _Tyler_ , both for male and female, she doesn’t know the meaning.  The name leaves her mouth as a hardened shape, but it lacks certain…conviction.  Purpose.

 _Khloe_ , weird letters mashed together, the name is a half cough, half wheeze, and too short for her taste.

She has not found what she is looking for yet.  The dead girl is not worried, the right name will come.

A hand reaches out of an alley and grabs the dead girl on her way past.  She goes with it and a large form – male, mid twenties, shaggy-headed, plaid-chested – slams her into a brick wall behind a stack of wooden pallets.  The dead girl’s head bounces off the brick with a sick smack.  Her brain rattles, shakes out stars and colored dots in her vision.

She grins up at the man.

“First comer, huh?  You sure you want to do this?”

The man above stares her down, dark fire in his brown eyes and a sneering upturn to his lips.  Vengeful righteousness, his skin reeks of it and stains the air with its sour tang.

“I’m sure,” Shaggy says.  “You killed a good friend of mine.”

The dead girl tilts her head to the side as much as she can.  Shaggy has a grip on her throat with one of his massive paws.

“Which one?  You’ll need to be specific, honey.  I kill lots of people.”

He shakes her.  Her head hits brick again.

“His name was Michael Lewis, you undead bitch.”

“Wow, harsh, and technically not true.  I am very, very much alive.  I don’t even eat brains, I just…take them.”

Shaggy tightens his grip, cuts off her air for a second.  He leans down and pulls a big ass Bowie knife from under his jacket and replaces the pressure on her windpipe with the blade.

The dead girl rolls her eyes.

“First, my condolences for whatever you are compensating for, sweetie.  Second, that name doesn’t ring  bell.  Rest assured, though, your friend did not die in vain.  Every bit of him went to use and he has my thanks.”

The knife bites into her soft skin.  Blood trickles down her neck.  Shaggy leans in close, breathing out the scent of bitter coffee.

“Apologize.”

“For what?”

“Apologize for what you’ve done.”

Pressure increases.  Cut deepens.  The trickle becomes a small river.  The dead girl hisses.

“For surviving?  Fat chance, bucko.  I kill to live, same as lions, same as jackals.  Why don’t you take a look at yourself?  You came here to kill me for retribution.  I can think of nothing more selfish.”

Her words hit a nerve as if she’d stomped on it with combat boots.  Shaggy draws the knife back just a fraction, face going purple with anger.  The dead girl plunges her fingers into his gut, up to the second knuckle.  Shaggy gasps.  Black veins ripple across his skin and thread their way to her.  He falls to his knees, knife slipping from his grasp.  It hits the concrete.  Dull clatter.

Shaggy looks up at the dead girl, his face thinning like a deflating balloon.  A white streak threads through his dark hair.

The dead girl has to stop before his skin opens up to release his organs.  Shaggy’s breath rattles in his chest, his heart stutters out a weird rhythm in the lingering shock.  The plaid now hangs off a bony shoulder, his once fine frame reduced to one of lean and shriveled muscle.

Interesting.

“You caught me on a really good day.  I’m already full and fit to burst, I don’t think I could take another ounce.”

The dead girl pushes his bangs out of his eyes.  Tucks them behind his ear.

“A long time ago I used to read all sorts of vampire books.  They always seemed to think that we monsters could pass on our gifts if we brought a chosen one to the bring of death and then fed them back of ourselves.  I’ve always been curious as to whether any of that was true, or if it was just human fear feeding on itself to make sure the story lived on.”

Shaggy’s eyes go wide.

“No,” he begs.  “Don’t.”

 

#

 

Shaggy’s real name is Ned Barnaby – the poor kid, what were his parents thinking? – and he drives a sweet red Chevy Malibu.  It’s hers now, at least in part, since Ned is still breathing.  The dead girl glances over to check on him.  Ned is propped up in the passenger seat, his head lolling against the window.  He has some weight back now.  Not the amount he had before, but enough so he is not a walking skeleton.

He smells different.  Before, the ache of life and caffeine rolled off him in mouth watering waves.  Now his essence smells of hot iron and the the sweet sourness of meat turning bad.  He is alive, and yet different.

Time will tell if it really worked, or if she just spoiled a potential meal.

It was strange, she reflects, sharing her flesh with someone else.  Her own canvas now has patchwork rough skin, scars, and faded outlines of the tattoos Ned carries under his shirt and jeans.  They look like pencil lines on the dead girl.  Pretty, but impermanent.  The mind meld thing, that’s new, too.  It’s not quite like opening a book and learning all his secrets, but she has new impressions in her brain.  Half remembered places, shadows of people, vague senses of favorite foods and random song lyrics.

The dead girl kind of likes it.  She wonders if Ned has bits of her floating around in his brain, too.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asks after a couple of miles.  His eyelids flutter at half mast, breath fogging the window like the velociraptor in that one dinosaur movie.

“Nothing,” the dead girl says.  “I don’t really have a grand plan or a nefarious scheme, no matter what you choose to think.  I’m not human anymore.  I’m just a predator.”

Ned grunts and tries to lift his head.  He can’t even do that right now, so he watches her in the reflection of the window.

“Predators only have one true instinct, you know.  We survive.  For so long it’s only been me.  Gets kind of lonely, but I do well enough, at least until someone smarter than you comes along.  Normally I would have left your bones in that alley, but I’m already so full, so it got me to thinking about the vampires, only they aren’t like me at all.  Then I got to thinking about wolves.”

Panic.  Ned’s heart gives a weak stutter and he groans.  There is a rotten little worm making its way through his head thanks to hers.  She can smell it, like rancid bologna left forgotten in the backseat of a car in one-hundred degree weather.  It’s doubt.  Sick, rotting doubt, because he can feel her conviction, he can probably recall her own memories.

“Wolves need packs to survive, otherwise they starve in the cold.  I’ve died often enough to see that’s true, so it makes me wonder how long I can survive if I have another predator by my side.”

The dead girl grins and reaches out across the console.  She pats his bony hand.  Ned flinches, a feeble jerk to get out of her grasp.  She doesn’t hold it against him.

“We’ll see how it works out.”

“I won’t be like you.”  The words come out heavy, a struggle of weighted, desperate breath.  “Just kill me.  Kill me and get it over with.  I don’t want to be like you.”

“Mm.  A little too late.  You’ll learn to deal if you survive this,” the dead girl waves at him, indicating the change.  “I did.  It’s all in the letting go.  Being one with the universe.  I’m excited about it.  I think it’d be fun, learning to hunt as a pair, tag teaming dinner.”

The dead girl relaxes into the seat – a heated seat, thank you very much – and signals into the turning lane, pointing the car south, chasing the tantalizing tendrils of spring in the air.

“Please,” he begs again, but his eyes close and he falls unconscious.  Then it’s just the dead girl and the road.

She pushes on the gas and roars down the highway.


	3. Chapter 3

Ned tries to kill the dead girl after they arrive in Austin.  He’s smart, he waits until she is distracted by the marvel of a hot shower and snaps her neck from behind.  He leaves her in a heap on the dirty linoleum and hobbles out the door, still shaky boned from the change.

The dead girl gives Ned a head start.  It’s only fair, she supposes.  He needs to learn this lesson on his own, otherwise it won’t stick, and it’ll be inconvenient to keep putting herself back together.

The Malibu roars to life and speeds out of the parking lot spitting gravel.

“Rude,” the dead girl says.  She twists her neck back into position, bones grinding together, and picks herself up off the nasty floor.  Jesus, has no one ever heard of Lysol?

She cracks her neck from side to side.  A couple more things pop.  Wow, that’s better than sex.

The dead girl stretches out on the motel bed and flips through the TV channels for a while.  Sports.  Sports.  News.  Sesame Street.

She gives it an hour.  By then there’s a weird pulling sensation deep in her chest, a tug and twist that has a distinct  _Ned_  feeling to it.

The dead girl locks the motel room and goes hunting.  The tug gets stronger or weaker depending on where she travels towards.

Huh, looks like she has her own Ned homing beacon.  That’s interesting.

 

#

 

Ned has himself holed up next to a dumpster smeared with something unmentionable.  The dead girl is impressed, his knees are up near his ears and he’s made his tall self as small as possible.  Ned’s hands are streaked red and he’s pressing his eyes into his palms, crying and begging to some god who will never answer.

The dead girl knows.  She tried it once, and here she still is.

“Gotta hand it to you, I never thought you’d hold out long enough to get across town.”

Ned startles so hard he cracks his head against the dumpster propping him up.  The hobo laying in front of Ned struggles for air and trembles from the shock of exposed muscles and nerves.

Ned holds up his hands.  They are as steady as jello in an earthquake.

“I tried, I tried so hard and then I stopped and-and now-“

Ned makes a choked off noise and gestures to the bum on the ground.

“Never stop in the middle of a meal,” the dead girl says.  “It’s just bad manners, not to mention kind of sadistic for the prey.”

The dead girl pokes at the hobo.  His eyes roll back and his heart finally gives out.  That’s unfortunate, now the meat is spoiled.

Ned strikes out at her, but she catches his fist and cracks the bones.  He yelps and jerks back, but she keeps her grip strong.

“Kill me,” he says.  “You don’t need me.  Just kill me, let me die.”

“No,” she says.

“I don’t want to be a monster,” Ned begs.  He’s crying again, sagging against the dumpster, fist going loose in her hand.  This close, the dead girl can feel everything Ned is feeling.  The ravenous hunger, all needy and screaming in his head, and the swirling dark of morality like a viral infection gnawing on his insides.

“You know, I think I may know the best way to help you.  You have all this misguided humanity still lurking in your bones.  Understandable, but not conductive to a good life.”

She applies more pressure.  He screams.  She punches him in the face.  His head smacks against the metal and it’s lights out for Ned.

The dead girl slings his arm over her shoulder and half drags, half carries him back to the Malibu, still parked at the mouth of the alley with the driver’s door open.  Getting him in the car is a struggle, because he’s nine miles tall and unhelpful with maneuvering, but she gets him in.  She adjusts the seat, the mirror, and pulls away from the curb at a reasonable speed.

 

#

 

The derelict homestead is still there after fifty-some years, which the dead girl finds surprising.  The roof of the cabin has caved in and looks to be housing variety of owls, swallows, and snakes from the tracks she can see.  The barn is down to a few posts, but the shed is still intact.  Everything is riddled with weeds.

The dead girl takes a moment to just look at the shed, to wait and see.  Used to be, gazing upon that unassuming building gave her chills and sent her to flinching like a chain was coming at her face.  She feels something in her gut, a fleeting sourness, and the distant desire to tear it down brick by brick until her hands are stumps.

The dead girl hauls Ned out of the car and she drags him to the shed.  The door budges after a couple of kicks, swings back on rusty hinges like the low growl of thunder.  She sways on the threshold for a moment, and the irony of coming full circle hits her.

She huffs out a laugh and dumps Ned in the middle of the empty shed.  He groans and rolls over, blinks up at her with dazed eyes.

“Get some rest,” she says, and happens to glance at the corner where a pile of old bones sit with a skull balanced on top.  The empty eye sockets follow her movements, still judging, but she just grins back.  Old bones don’t scare her anymore.

“Please,” Ned says.

The dead girl closes the door and locks it tight.

 

#

 

Ned is sitting up the next time the dead girl opens the shed door.  He blinks against the bright sunlight that falls across his face.

“Who is that?”

The guy is about Ned’s age, a bit on the skinny side, but a scrappy fighter.  The dead girl has healing bruises on her face and a couple cracked ribs.  Skinny struggles against the ropes tied around him and screams through the gag.

“A crash course in dinner etiquette.  You can come outside when you finished a full meal.”

The dead girl plants her hand on Skinny’s back and shoves him in.  He staggers in and goes sprawling in the dirt.

“No.  No, I’m not doing this.”  Ned reached toward Skinny to help him up, but Skinny scrambles away from his blood-dirty fingers.  Ned flinches, hands balling up, and turns to the dead girl.  “I won’t do this again, not for anything.”

“Then I guess you’ll get to know dinner pretty well until your hunger comes back.  Just remember, quickness is kindness.  Don’t make your meal suffer.”

The dead girl closes the door on Ned’s yelling.  The sound cuts off abrupt, thick door, thick walls.  No one can hear you screaming from inside.

The dead girl goes back to the car and rifles through Skinny’s backpack.  He’s a college kid with a bag full of books and a smartphone with a ton of cool little apps that just beg to be explored.

Screaming and thumps come from the Malibu’s trunk.  She ignores them.

The link between the dead girl and Ned flares up.  Fear, hatred, hunger, it’s a pulsating shard of glass between them.

The dead girl stretches out on the hood of the Malibu, crosses her ankles, and thumbs through the phone.

She still needs a name.  Now is as good a time as any to settle on one.

 

#

 

The dead girl opens the shed door three days later.  She has to hand it to Ned, the guy is stubborn with enough moral fiber for an epic bout of constipation, but the thing about curses and hunger is that they shred even the staunchest of ideals and aspirations.

Ned is standing in the middle of the shed, chest heaving, new skin spread over his form many shades darker than his original.  Dark, sweaty hair is matted against his slick forehead.  He shakes, weak and powerful all at once, his guts twisting in on themselves, wanting  _more._

Skinny’s bones are scattered among the dust and rat turds on the floor.  They gleam, devoid of any lingering blood or muscle.

“Very nice,” she says.  “I knew you’d get it eventually.”

Ned says nothing, doesn’t even look up.  He stares down at the stray femur before him.

“You’re still hungry.”

Not a question.  The dead girl has teeth in her own belly.

“Come on, then.”

She steps through the open door.  Ned follows her out a few long moments later.

Skinny’s girlfriend, Rhonda Lowry according to her driver’s license, is trussed up in front of the Malibu, mascara streaking her face, her wrists rubbed raw from the rope, snot bubbling down her nose.

The dead girl turns and walks backwards to face Ned while they approach Rhonda.

“I’ve been doing some reading lately, trying to knowledge up on the whole pack concept.  Pack’s work together in everything they do.  Finding shelter.  Water.  Protecting the territory.  Hunting.  The better the working relationship, the healthier the pack.”

The dead girl palms a pocket knife and kneels beside Rhonda.  Rhonda whimpers and curls in on herself.  The dead girl turns her over and saws through the ropes until they fall away.  She makes sure to nick the skin a couple times, draw a bit of blood.  It’s Ned’s first time, after all.

Rhonda sits up, eyes wide as she reeks of fear.

“Run,” the dead girl tells her.

Rhonda struggles to her feet.  Falls down.  Cries.  Gets up.  Runs for the trees.

Ned starts after her.  The dead girl smacks her arm across his chest.

“Give her a head start,” she says.  “A pack works together, but there is a leader, and that is me.  We hunt when I say hunt.  We go where I say we go.  You follow my direction.  I am your alpha.  Do we have an understanding?”

Ned’s eyes flick between the dead girl and the tree line where Rhonda disappears from sight.  He licks his lips and meets her gaze.  A red haze drifts over his eyes, and the last of his moral compunctions drain away in the face of an enticing chase.

His turning tide sends a corresponding flutter of  _rightness_  through the links.

“You’re my alpha.”

“That’s right.  And I’ve chosen a name for myself.  You can call me Persephone.”

Persephone,  _to destroy_.  Mythology pegs the goddess as a victim, the conquest of Hades, dragged to the underworld and imprisoned for part of the year which brought winter to the lands above.

The dead girl was a victim once, but any queen of hell knows how to survive, how to thrive, and this name speaks of freedom and life as sweet as the first breath stolen from newborn’s lungs.

“We hunt?” Ned asks.

Persephone turns her gaze towards the tree line.  She licks her own lips.

“We hunt.”

 

#

 

Seven hundred miles away, in the basement of a quaint yellow house in the middle of the suburbs, a coven of three join hands over a skeleton laid out on a green pool table serving as an alter.  Glade candles, lavender and linen scented, flicker beside each corner pocket.

One witch takes an athame in hand and pricks the fingers of everyone present.  They drip their blood onto the bones.  A faint rumble from underfoot shakes the walls.

“By the elements, the spirits, and the gods of old, we call upon the Hunter to return to this plane and finish the hunt once more,” they chant.

One of the witches turns away and plucks a finch out of the cages set up in the corner.  It squirms and wiggles in her grasp.  She brings it to the table and they each hold part of the bird – a wing, a foot, the neck – and the athame separates the head with one swipe.

The witches hold the bird steady while it flops.  They drain it of fluid and organs, drizzle them on the bones.  The bones sizzle and pop.

“Come back to us, Hunter.”

They drop the bird and it disintegrates, feathers spreading and rippling.  The witches bring another bird.  And then another, and then another, until the cages littering the floor are empty and the bones are not bones anymore, but a young woman streaked with red and gasping for air with new lungs.

“Welcome back to life,” the head witch says.

The Hunter sits up, eyes darting back and forth.

“Why I am back?” the Hunter demands.  “What happened?”

“The Cursed has returned to life, she is devouring once more.”

The witches cover the Hunter with a bathrobe and lead her to the bathroom to clean up.

“How?  I made my sacrifice.”

“The tides keep turning,” one witch says.

They give the Hunter clothing, feed her, and present her with the weapons once buried with her: a 9mm and a necklace strung with sparrow bones.

They give the Hunter a Toyota pickup and bless her thrice with spell and prayer.

The Hunter applies a layer of lipstick, bright red, and checks her reflection in the rearview mirror.

Her eyes glow burnished gold and a set of claws dig deep into her belly, remnants of a hunger not her own.

The hunger pulls her west, so she follows it.


	4. Chapter 4

Ned likes post cards.

They are three weeks down the road.  Between all the gas stations, Big Hurley diners, and the po’dunk motels, Ned has managed to collect a thick stack of glossy covered cards from the surrounding states.

_Yee-haw from Texas!  Land of Steak, Sweet Tea, and Armadillo Wrasslin’!_

_Ooooooooklahoma!  Come for the lumber, stay for the moonshine!_

_Lovin’ the Extraterrestrial in all of us!  Enjoying New Mexico!_

_Greetings from the Rockies, having a high old time!_

There are too many exclamation points for Persephone’s liking.  Most of those states don’t warrant that kind of excitement.

“You like the pictures or something?” Persephone asks.  They are sipping coffee and settling the remnants of Joe Kerry Lawson at a truck stop picnic table.  Gum is smeared on the corner of the rickety thing next to ‘Nikky + Bobby Jr’ carved in a half finished heart on the top.

“Yeah,” Ned shrugs.

“You never write anything on them.”

“Who the hell am I gonna write?”  He glances up, red-tinged eyes half visible under that ridiculous mop of hair.  It was long enough when he was alive, but he hasn’t bothered to cut it since, so it’s gotten longer after every meal.  Persephone should offer to braid it for him.

“Mom and Daddy.  Cousin Sarah.  You can tell them all about your dead-life adventures.  Ooh, you could tell them about Lubbock.  You and alcohol, man, that was some funny shit.”

She left it up to Ned to figure out why going after drunks was not a good idea, especially frat boys after Sunday night football.  Turns out Ned himself is quite a happy drunk.  And handsy.  And prone to eat more than he can actually hold.  The hangover was hilarious, and some poor bastard is probably still cleaning gut chunks out of the carpet.

Ned rolls his eyes and goes back to thumbing through the stack.  He keeps them in some kind of order, one that she hasn’t deciphered, and just looks at them.

Well, everyone needs a hobby, she supposes.

“Where to next?” Ned asks after a while.

Persephone squints at the sun riding high over the tilted Exxon sign.

“Ever been to Louisiana?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

Ned pauses and then shrugs.  It doesn’t matter much to him, so long as they stop places where he can get more postcards.  Though a good portion of Ned’s resentment and anger over the whole being undead thing passed after their first hunt, it still bubbles up over their connection like pus from an infected wound sometimes.  He hasn’t tried to kill her again, Ned’s smart like that, but the little cogs in his head are turning all the time.

He’s thinking and planning.  Biding his time.  Persephone laughs and laughs inside her head.

They are so alike in some ways.  Ned would have an aneurysm if he knew.

“Gotta take a leak,” Ned says after he finishes his coffee.  He looks to her, waits for her nod, before he takes their trash and throws it in the bin.

When he comes back out, Persephone is in the car with the windows rolled down and some weird French pop music streaming in from the satellite radio.

She flicks a post card into Ned’s lap.  He picks it up.  A stupid bulldog is grinning and slobbering on the front, _The Road Trip Ain’t So Ruff_ below it in big blocky letters.

“Something actually funny for the collection,” she says.

Ned glances back up at her, face unreadable, but the connection floods with rapid fire mixed emotions.

Persephone smiles and puts her sunglasses on.  She pulls out onto the highway and glances at the rearview mirror.

Six miles behind her, a red Toyota barrels towards them.

 

#

 

“Go on and get something from that pizza place down the block,” Persephone says when they get a motel room.

Ned raises a fuzzy eyebrow.

“You want me to go get pizza?”

“There’s some q-tips in my bag if you’re having trouble hearing.”

“You don’t let me out of your sight ninety-percent of the time.”

“Well, guess who’s graduating to his big boy pants today?”

Persephone tosses a crumpled twenty on the bed spread and grabs her bag of pilfered clothing and toiletries.

“Whatever you get, make sure my side has pineapple.”

Ned pulls a disgusted face and snatches the money.

“You’re up to something,” he says, watching her from under his bangs.  “There’s nothing to stop me from running off now.”

“‘Course not.  You know how to hunt, how to eat proper, even how to clean up after yourself.  I can always find you if you go, but you’re right, there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from leaving.”

Ned has taken to his new state with a brutal grace that ignites a fire in her chest.  It’s a feeling she feels herself when she takes down someone who gives her a fighting chase, when she has to let loose all her trappings and full out run as she was cursed to do, when she gives up everything for the moment in the hunt.

Seeing it before her, in someone she helped create, it’s heady and exhilarating. 

“Then why give me the chance?”

“You like having a puzzle.  Think on it a while, see what comes to you.”

She throws him a wink and disappears into the bathroom.

A few moments later the motel door closes and the car starts.  He doesn’t peel out of the parking lot.  Their connection stretches as Ned drives down the road and stops at the pizza place.

Well, isn’t that something.

Persephone comes out of the bathroom.  She’s not surprised in the least to see the Hunter sitting in the chair by the window.

“Hey, cousin.  How was the dirt nap?”

The Hunter rises from the seat.  Her hands are empty, but her pistol sits on the tabletop, close.

“Not long enough.”

“Well, I guess we only have your magnificent foresight to blame for that.”

“Don’t worry,” the Hunter says.  Her lips are a plump downturned frown, a red slash against her freckle dusted skin.  “I learned from my mistake.”

Persephone tilts her head to the side, challenging.

“Did you?”

The Hunter smiles now.  She parts her lips and lets out a low whistle.

Flapping wings sound close to Persephone’s head.  She turns, that damn sparrow skeleton comes at her face and bursts a small baggie of powder, poof.  Persephone gets it in her nose, her mouth.  The room tilts and she falls.

Everything goes black.

 

#

 

Before she knew better, before she was cursed, the girl who would become dead and Persephone used to dream about turning into a bird and flying away.  Nan would tell her stories about magic and talking beasts, but they were no fairy tales.  Not Disney ones, anyway; Nan told her the dark stories, the stories about girls with dirt under their nails who put poison in goblets, cut out the hearts of those that posed a threat to them, and became dragons to fend off their enemies.

“We live in a fucked up place,” Nan always said.  “Little girls need knives in their hands or else the world thinks it can bend them over whichever way it wants to.”

Nan was…different, that’s for sure, but she never lied.  Eventually, Persephone would fall back on those stories and they would help her survive the curse, and then thrive.  Before that she wanted them to be false, and she hoped with all the strength of her tiny, still beating heart, that God would turn her into a bird so she could fly away somewhere nice, somewhere safe, anywhere but there.

God was not listening, obviously, and for all her stories, Nan could not prepare Persephone for the betrayal that eventually happened.

It always comes from where you least expect it, that knife that slides across your throat.

Still, after all was said and done, Persephone has to admit, Nan’s stories kept her alive, technically.  Every story had the same advice.

 _Do anything you have to do to stay alive and never apologize_.

Dignity and morals have no place in the real world.

 

#

 

Persephone wakes up as the hunter drags her out of the back of the truck.  She is hogtied, and grunts as she hits dirt and rolls, wind knocked out of her lungs.  She is in the middle of an open field where the rampant buffalo grass reaches towards a darkening sky.  She twists her hands, but the rope digs deep.

The hunter pulls a shovel out of the truck bed and leans it against the truck.  Looks like the grave will be under open sky this time.  Undoubtedly deeper, too.

A flutter catches Persephone’s attention.  The skeleton sparrow hops across the dirt, empty eyeholes boring into her.  It flaps it’s bones and hop-scrambles up her body, tiny bone claws digging into her skin and clothing, until it is right above her.

It settles on her stomach and the spell keeping it together seeps into Persephone, a steady leak of heaviness that pins her to the ground.

The skeleton sparrow stabs its beak into her flesh.

_Peck.  Peck.  Peck._

White turns red.

The Hunter hauls out a witches bag laden so thick with magic it clogs Persephone’s senses for a moment.  Then she kneels by Persephone and out comes hex jars one by one.  The Hunter lines them up next to Persephone and then produces a wicked sharp knife with a handle made from carved human thigh bone.

The Hunter nudges the bird away with a gentle hand, then slides the knife under the hem of Persephone’s shirt.  The cloth parts for the blade with a faint ripping sound.  Persephone shivers.  Goose bumps ripple over her skin.

“I never did understand your reasoning behind all this.”

Persephone bites the inside of her cheek.  The Hunter sticks the knife in the small hole from the bone sparrow.  Her flesh parts just as easy as the cloth did.  Fire ignites through her nerves and muscles.

“I never did anything to you.  Never b-beat on you, never stole your damn barbies.  What was it then?  What was my unforgivable sin that justified my curse?”

The Hunter gets a slippery grip on Persephone’s intestine and gives a vicious tug.  Persephone clamps her teeth around a cut off scream with the snap of a bear trap.

“Must’a been something bad.”

Persephone groans.  Her intestines come out with a slick sounding _pop_.  The hunter shoves her gut into one of the glass jars.

“You brought this on yourself,” the Hunter says.

“You cursed me first, so enlighten me.”

The Hunter presses her bright red lips together.  Persephone watches through half lidded eyes.  Blood coats the Hunter from finger to elbow.  It’s stark against the yellow grass.  Would almost be pretty, if it weren’t Persephone’s blood.

The Hunter sighs deeply out of her nose.  Narrows eyes.  Purses lips.

“You used to be such a nice kid,” Persephone murmurs.  “Always the favorite.”

Persephone yelps as a fist closes around her kidney and squeezes.

“I was never the favorite,” the Hunter hisses.  “It was always you, all about you.  Nan and Uncle James, the neighbors, the teachers, Caleb-“ the Hunter cuts herself off, lets go of the kidney.

Persephone chokes on a laugh of barbed wire.

“Caleb, of course.  Should have known this was all over him.”

The Hunter scowls.

“You don’t know anything.”

“You cursed me because I slept with the boy you liked.  I am so disappointed, you have no idea.  Holy hell, I was cursed over your fucking crush.”

“You stole him from me, just like you stole everyone else.  That’s all you were good at.”

The Hunter picks up the blade again.  Bits of dirt and grass are stuck in the tacky blood.  The Hunter uses it to split the skin upward to her ribs.  Persephone growls low and guttural.  Her vision goes white and pain, God the pain, it’s coming undone by the threads and foundations all over again.

When she comes back to the present, the Hunter has added her kidneys to a new jar and is wrist deep getting at her liver.

“You think- you think everyone loved me.”  Persephone hacks up blood.  It stains teeth and tongue.  She rolls the thick copper around and swallows it back.  “So blind.  I was the favorite _example_.  I had such…spirit, they said.  Worst thing a girl could have.  Caleb liked that, though.”

The Hunter removes her liver.  _Snick._

“You weren’t missing much, though.  Tiny dick, no idea how to use it.  Didn’t last two minutes.”

“None of this would have happened if you had just been better, then I wouldn’t-“

The Hunter’s hands still.  Persephone lifts her head.

“Wouldn’t what?  Turned me into a monster like in Nan’s stories?  That’s on you, little girl.  You and your jealousy over a small dicked farm boy.  Your sins outweigh mine by miles.”

Persephone lets her lead drop to the ground.  The stars are out now, tiny pinpricks of white against the darkening blue.

The Hunter says nothing for the longest time.  Persephone’s world shrinks down to the slice and pull of the blade, the warmth seeping out of her and into the ground, the steady draining of life she has taken such care to procure.  Persephone closes her eyes and clamps her teeth around the whimper crawling over her tongue.

“You drove me to this,” the Hunter says, finally.  The conviction wavers.

“No,” Persephone gasps.  “You did yourself.”

Persephone opens her eyes.  It takes a moment for her eyes to focus.  The truck’s headlights illuminate the Hunter and shadow her face.  A dark form stands behind the Hunter.

Persephone’s mouth stretches wide from side to side, all bloody teeth with red dripping down her chin.

“You should know something,” Persephone says.  “I got smart.  You know what makes the wolf better than the shepherd?”

The Hunter tilts her head to the side.

“A pack.”

Ned swings the shovel and it connects, _crack_ , with the back of the Hunter’s skull.  The Hunter slumps over to the side, head lolling next to the full jars.  The bone sparrow runs at Ned.  He lifts a heavy boot and brings it down.  The tiny bones splinter.

Ned stares down at Persephone, shovel in hand.  He’s backlit by the truck, but she can still see his eyes, wide red and blazing.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he answers.

 

#

 

Persephone next wakes up in the car.  She blinks slow.  The car zips past blurry corn fields and the morning sun spills over the horizon like a dirty egg on concrete.  She runs her fingers across her belly.  Duct tape stretches over the skin, wrapped around her tight.  Her organs are back in place, sort of.  They slosh around inside, not attached, but there.

“How long was I out?”

Ned glances over.  He sits sprawled in the seat, one elbow resting on his knee, two fingers on the steering wheel.  The other hand dangles out the open window.

“Couple hours,” he says.

“I’m still alive.”

“Barely.”

She wants to sit up, but the effort it would take is greater than her energy, so she stays where she is.

“Couldn’t kill the bitch.  Tried to eat her, but it hurt too much.”

“Yeah, that happens with her.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“My cousin, once upon a time and a very bad fairy tale ago.  Pissed her off, apparently.  She’s to thank for the whole cursed bit.”

Ned gives a nod.

“Can we kill her?”

“Don’t know.  Haven’t succeeded yet, myself.”

“Guess it’s a good thing there’s two of us now.”

“Guess so.  She wasn’t expecting that.”

Ned actually smiles.  It’s a nasty and sharp in the low light.

Persephone manages to tilt her head his way and studies his profile.

“What made you come for me?”

Ned shifts in his seat, doesn’t look at her.  The connection is murky now, still buried beneath the pain of having her guts ripped out and played with, but it’s there.  Low level thrumming, kind of like a pleasant hum.

“I felt like I was dying back at the diner.  It pissed me off.”

Persephone snorts.

“You still thinking to kill me yourself?”

“I have dibs.”

Persephone can’t laugh yet.  She settles for a grin.

A strangled yell comes from the trunk, followed by a series of thumps.

“Figured we could experiment,” Ned says, eyes never leaving the road.  “See what it takes to kill that woman.  Picked up some dinner, too.  Thought you’d probably need something after all this.”

“Careful there, tiger.  A girl might think you actually care.”

Ned snorts and rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t outright deny it.

How about that?


End file.
